Nissan makes Barcelona the testing laboratory for the first electric van
The company trusts in government support to sell 20,000 units made in the Zona Franca in one year
Barcelona¨From today on, Barcelona joins in Nissan´s electric vehicle revolution¨. With these words, the vice-president of the Japanese multinational, Andy Palmer, yesterday inaugurated the production of the world´s first 100% electric van that Nissan will make and sell from the plant in Barcelona´s Zona Franca. The executive celebrated that the Catalan factory has joined in the company´s race to be the leader in electrical mobility. ¨One colleague from the competition took me for a lunatic but I see he is building electric vehicles now and that makes me want to say to him ´Welcome to the world of fools´¨. said Palmer, ironically responding to doubts generated by Nissan´s rush to sell vehicles with this technology.
Although Nissan is confident that sales figures will be good, they also recognize that the green vehicle still needs government support to prosper. Palmer himself said that without this aid (purchase subsidies, installation of recharging points and other measures) the electric car would not be profitable for its manufacturers, who could not offer an affordable price to drivers.
Barcelona will be, then, the testing ground for the multinational, which will test for the first time in the market a 100% industrial vehicle (a van). The projections call for sales of 20,000 units per year, all made in Barcelona and exported to some twenty markets worldwide. And for the first time the Catalan factory will sell in Japan, Nissan's home market.
The eNV200 has a range of 170 kilometers on a single charge, which is enough for the milage that most city delivery vans do in a day, as Nissan's vice-president of industrial operations for Spain Frank Torres explained yesterday. The retail price is still a secret, but using the Leaf (Nissan´s electric passenger car) as a reference, the electric version would be about 10,000 euros more expensive than the diesel version and could cost around 30,000 euros.
The company has some orders already, such as the 100 units that it will sell to British Gas. In Catalonia, units have been given to Mercabarna, and the council of Barcelona has vowed to provide incentives to make the van the city´s electric taxi.
The first of three investments
The arrival of the electric van is the first step for the Barcelona factory to approach 100% of its capacity and hit the 200k unit mark annually. It will achieve this, if all goes well, at the end of next year, when the new passenger car that will begin manufacture this summer, and the pickup that will be produced next year are underway. Once the new models arrive, Torres insisted, the workforce of the company will grow by 1,000 people, to a total of almost 5,000 workers.
Torres made a passing reference to the pay cuts and other conditions that employees accepted in order to attract the production of the new models. ¨The efforts to be competitive have borne fruit, and here is the reward¨, he said.
Catalan President Artur Mas stressed that the investment of 100M euros by Nissan to make the electric van is an example of the appeal of Barcelona and Catalonia for multinational companies. He reminded everyone that a year ago, when another investment was at stake, the government dedicated more effort to attract the vehicle production than to other matters (in a veiled reference to the independence debate).
Spain's Minister of Industry José Manuel Soria also attended the event and emphasized the assistance that Spain's government provided to the automobile sector, which is now ¨driving Spain's recovery¨. Soria recalled the five PIVE aid plans and the lines of credit at advantageous conditions that helped finance the manufacturers' projects.
